A Painful Memory

Five years ago, on my second date with Anne, her dog Hobie (now 12) attacked a porcupine at our cottage. We had had 1.5 bottles of wine and it was 1 am on a Sunday so I said ‘we can sit on him and pull them out’. Then he opened his mouth and thought, “um no”.

I called the emergency vet in Clintonville and we drove in – Hobie let me carry him inside, fully alert. After anesthesia it took doc 1.5 hours to get all the quills out. He said he’d seen worse, with pit bulls, but not many. Happy anniversary Hobie~
(he was fine the next morning, and has trusted me ever since)

Ouch. I didn’t think there was anything worse than when two of our dogs got skunked, one right in the mouth and nose so for months after when the sun would warm the top of his head you could still smell skunk. But this trumps that for sure. Ouch again!

Oh geez. My dog tried to wiggle through barbed wire and got one of those diamond shaped razor sharp thingies stuck in his ear, next to his head, leaving no room for movement. It took me maybe five minutes, which seemed like an hour, to slowly and carefully get him free. It was in high weeds and he was facing away from me, I couldn’t see anything. He was left with a small hole in his ear, antibiotics for ten days, and just me filled with guilt for letting him get anywhere near there.

My sister’s dog back when he was under a year old and we were living out in the country on 10 acres (over 10 yrs ago), wouldn’t learn to leave the porcupines alone. He went after them at least 3 times and each time the quills got worse. Our parent’s couldn’t afford to take the dog to the vet, so we opted to remove the quills ourselves. Not an easy job, but it was never as bad as the picture above.

The only thing that stopped it was tethering the dog, and eventually moving into town. Thankfully my dog got it once and learned to stay away, even though she would still bark at them at a distance. removed her quills ourselves too.